The Download: supercharged scams and studying AI healthcare
The Download: supercharged scams and studying AI healthcare Plus: DeepSeek has unveiled its long-awaited new AI model. This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. We’re in a new era of AI-driven scams When ChatGPT was released in late 2022, it showed how easily generative AI could create human-like text. This quickly caught the eye of cybercriminals, who began using LLMs to compose malicious emails. Since then, they’ve adopted AI for everything from turbocharged phishing and hyperrealistic deepfakes to automated vulnerability scans. Many organizations are now struggling to cope with the sheer volume of cyberattacks. AI is making them faster, cheaper, and easier to carry out, a problem set to worsen as more cybercriminals adopt these tools—and their capabilities improve. Read the full story on how AI is reshaping cybercrime. —Rhiannon Williams “Supercharged scams” is one of the 10 Things That Matter in AI Right Now, our essential guide to what’s really worth your attention in the field. Subscribers can watch an exclusive roundtable unveiling the technologies and trends on the list, with analysis from MIT Technology Review’s AI reporter Grace Huckins and executive editors Amy Nordrum and Niall Firth. Healthcare AI is here. We don’t know if it actually helps patients. Doctors are using AI to help them with notetaking. AI-based tools are trawling through patient records, flagging people who may require certain support or treatments. They are also used to interpret medical exam results and X-rays. A growing number of studies suggest that many of these tools can deliver accurate results. But there’s a bigger question here: Does using them actually translate into better health outcomes for patients? We don’t yet have a good answer—here’s why. —Jessica Hamzelou The story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter that gives you the latest from the worlds of health and biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 DeepSeek has unveiled its long-awaited new AI model The Chinese company has just launched preview versions of DeepSeek-V4. (CNN) +It says V4 is the most powerful open-source platform. (Bloomberg $) + And rivals top closed-source models from OpenAI and DeepMind. (SCMP) + The model is adapted for Huawei chip technology. (Reuters $) 2 More countries are curbing children's social media access Norway is set to enforce the latest ban. (Reuters $) + The Philippines could follow soon. (Bloomberg $) + Americans are pushing to get AI out of schools. (The New Yorker) 3 The US has accused China of mass AI theft as tensions rise A White House memo claims Chinese firms are exploiting American models. (BBC) + Beijing calls the accusations “slander.” (Ars Technica) 4 OpenAI set itself apart from Anthropic by widely releasing its new model It’s releasing GPT-5.5 to all ChatGPT users, despite cybersecurity concerns. (NYT $) + OpenAI says the new model is…
